Just how hard is it to name an album? I assume it's a tedious process. An album name is perhaps more important than it's cover, giving potential listeners a glimpse into what they can expect from its insides. Unfortunately, The Baltic Sea set the bar pretty high with their debut title, Through Scenic Heights and Days' Regrets, and the tracks just don't live up to it.

One of the biggest problems The Baltic Sea has is their vocals, employed by vocalist/guitarist Todd Hutchisen. While his choir boy voice in "Monswoon" is mildly enjoyable, it changes in songs such as "Parallax" and "The Everyday Seperation" where the vox can be too overpowering and out-of-tune, creating a "Maybe I should turn this down a bit" feeling. Todd's attempts to illustrate his emotions through voice are admirable, but I kept feeling throughout the album that the vocal parts could have been left out completely. "Carpenter", the generally boring instrumental interlude, affirmed to me that this band does feel better without lyrics. To create the whole package, singing and all, the vocals need to be awesome, and we are two fries short of a Gregor Samsa here.

I'm not going to be as hard as the pretend critics in This Is Spinal Tap, who suggested that their album Shark Sandwich be called Shit Sandwich, but I wasn't taken to any "scenic heights" either. While I do get the feeling of regret mixed with one part gentle sadness, one part anger, I wasn't overly impressed with any of the tracks. Again, in "Monswoon", I did fancy Jason Ingalls' drum work, but I think he could have put a little more "oomph" into songs like "No Heart March". The guitar work, on the other hand, was pretty impressive, but they can't leave it to one instrument to make the band whole.

The self-recorded samples that The Baltic Sea employs are also short of striking. It's great that they were creative enough to do their own sample work, but I was a bit annoyed by the doom ridden voice in "Dot.Violence", and the French girl and typewriter didn't do it for me either. Believe me, I've heard samples that have blown my mind ("In Another Life, When We Are Cats", anyone?) and these were far from it.

The Baltic Sea has talent. They could definitely release an instrumental version of Through Scenic Heights, which I think was a better idea in the first place. I'm not putting any of The Baltic Sea on my iPod (I'm not bragging though, it's just a Nano) but if you do, I would still be your friend.